A series of Alternate History science fiction novels by SM Stirling, consisting thus far of The Sky People and In The Courts of the Crimson Kings. A Reconstruction of classic Planetary Romance novels and tropes for the modern audience, the novels explore a world built around a simple concept: what if Mars and Venus really were approximately like we envisioned them before all that boring reality got in the way?

As scientific observation of our nearest planetary neighbors intensifies during the early 20th century, it becomes clear that both worlds have oxy-nitrogen atmospheres much like our own. By 1948, the possibility of life on both is so strong that the Space Race kicks in early and keeps going, radically altering political history from that point on as the Cold War begins to lose importance and military spending is diverted to exploration. And when the Russians finally land a probe on the surface of Venus in 1962, the first image its cameras send back is of a dinosaur-infested jungle. And the second image is of a beautiful blonde woman in a Fur Bikini being chased by a savage horde of neanderthals.

But once contact has been made and permanent scientific studies begin, oddities begin to creep up. For one thing, the humans of Venus are entirely too human to be a product of parallel evolution — a conclusion reinforced by the simultaneous discoveries that some tribes speak a language clearly descended from Indo-European, and that only two hundred million years ago the planet was an uninhabitable acid-veiled hothouse, becoming Earthlike practically in the blink of an eye as far as the cosmic timescale goes.

As evidence mounts that someone has been tinkering with the worlds of the solar system for millions of years, continuing right into the last few millennia, the question humanity must ask is: Who are the Lords of Creation, and what do they intend for their great multiplanetary experiment?

Not to be confused with Lords of Creation, a very weird role-playing game published in the mid-Eighties.

Justified in that the Lords of Creation seeded Venus with Earthly lifeforms two hundred million years ago, and have been coming back and adding new batches of Earthly life roughly every two million years since then, including human specimens only a few thousand years ago; with no mass extinction on Venus, dinosaurs coexist semi-peacefully with critters from every era since. The harsher Martian climate, coupled with extensive bioengineering, averts this.

InvokedIn-Universe near the beginning of The Sky People, when an actual palaeontologist examines some fossils (and the surrounding rock) and realizes that what she's seeing isn't possible.

Awesome Moment of Crowning: the Invisible Crown of the Tollamune Emperors supplies its own awesomeness, but the official ceremony is pretty darn impressive.

Badass Bookworm: Every Earth person not actually on Earth, as you have to be this just to qualify for the space program.

BambooShamboo Technology: Space travel is EXPENSIVE, which means the Venusian colonists have to make do with bronze age materials for their equipment wherever they can.

Dark-Skinned Blonde: Teesa and the rest of the Cloud Mountain People have olive skin and light blonde hair. The Venusians of Kartahown and its surroundings are mostly dark-haired, but some are either this or Dark-Skinned Redhead.

IKEA Erotica: Happens due to the nature of the Martian language. "I request more energetic intromission, emphatic tense!" is the closest you can get to talking dirty.

Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: all the science fiction writers gathered to watch the Mars probe images in the second novel's prologue.

A justified example: New Frontier is this universe's version of Star Trek, and is fundamentally somewhat different due to differences in world culture, but is everybitasinfluential as it is in our world.

Lost Technology: All over the place, in the form of the Lords of Creations' stuff, but also the fact that the Martians are said to have lost a great deal of their own biotech.

Organic Technology: Deconstructed. Martians rely on this, in the absence of major metal and fossil fuel resources. Almost all technology more complicated than a sword is biological, to a very high level, with living guns (recharging after firing takes time, which is why swords are not obsolete), living engines to supplement the sailpower of desert-crossing wheeled ships, rugs that crawl onto your feet to warm them, giant creatures that eat rocks and vomit road-paving material. However, Stirling points out that it requires food and oxygen, as well as being less durable then metal. It is useful enough however that some of it has been imported by Earth.

Precursors: the Lords of Creation, except that it seems they're not so much Pre- as Presentcursors. They're also neglectful, as something has gone wrong with their monitoring system and its "schedule" for the three worlds.

Royal Blood: Justified by the Invisible Crown and the Ruby Throne, which scan your DNA and kill you if you don't have the Tollamune genome. Given that the instrumentalities of both are vital to keeping Mars viable in the long term, the Tollamunes themselves have come to regret the system.

When the excavating party are attacked by feral engines, there are 42 of them, and the description of them sounds a lot like larger versions of H.G. Wells' Martians. (It's even mentioned that if bred with too much intelligence, they'd try to escape. Escape to Earth, perhaps?)

Single-Biome Planet: Averted sort of; Mars has several varieties of "cold and dry", for example.

Stock Dinosaurs: The species that flourished on Venus happen to be all the popular ones, like triceratops.

Vestigial Empire: The Tollamune emperors once ruled all of Mars. By the time of the story they are reduced to ruling the territory around their capital at Olympus Mons, where all the old court officials and functionaries continue, though largely without actual functions.

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